Photographic printers are known to the prior art. Automatic printers typically include supply and take up rollers for a photosensitive photographic material and a mechanism to automatically advance the material through a Printing station. A shutter is employed to control the exposure.
An example of the type of printer discussed above is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,545 issued Apr. 20, 1976, in the name of Orren J. Lucht for PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT APPARATUS which is commonly owned with the present invention and which is hereby incorporated by reference. The printer of this patent employs an interchangeable lens assembly formed or stacked, alternative lens configurations. That is, the different lens configurations are spaced from each other along the general direction of the printer optical path. They are movable, within the lens assembly, between first and second positions--one of those positions being within the optical path of the printer with the other being without the optical path. Selectively actuated plungers are operative to position the desired lens configuration within the printer's optical path.
The printer of the above-incorporated patent provides greater flexibility than other prior art printers and has contributed significantly to the photographic printing industry. Its output is a roll of exposed photographic material which, when processed, produces a roll of photographic prints. Typically, a single image bearing transparency is employed for multiple exposures of varying sizes. Thus, each exposure may require a change in lens configuration.
Information as to the number of exposures and desired print sizes must be presented to the printer for the selection of the proper lens configuration. Other information such as color balance, crop size, etc., must also be presented. .Such information may be presented manually, a time consuming operation. Alternatively, the information may be recorded on information storage media, such as a reel of magnetic tape, for automatic control of the exposure parameters. This has been done sequentially for multiple transparencies requiring that the transparency sequence be maintained. Further, the recording process is a manual one and does not offer an efficient check on the data entered.
An automatic control of printer exposure parameters that avoids sequence dependency while eliminating at least some manual data entry is disclosed in concurrently filed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 349,649 filed in the name of Stephen A. Bartz for a PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTING SYSTEM INCLUDING AN IMPROVED MASKING CARD which is commonly owned with the present invention and which is hereby incorporated by reference. The control in the incorporated Bartz specification is provided by an improved masking card, the masking card carrying a transparency bearing an image to be printed at an aperture thereof while contributing to registration of the image relative to the printer optical axis, in known manner. Information storage media is carried by the card and includes a plurality of data blocks dedicated to a printer exposure parameter. Marked boxes bearing ghost character outlines of an optically readable character font are preprinted on the card. Data representative of desired exposure parameters may be entered on the card by tracing the ghost character outlines, the tracings then being optically readable and the information they convey being transferable to the information storage media. Thus, by reading the information storage media, which is typically a strip of magnetic tape, the exposure parameters of the printer may be automatically controlled. However, an efficient handling of the masking cards of the type described has not heretofore been available.